The art of Ken Reid: World Wide Weirdies

It's always fun to discover something you should have already known about. Ken Reid's illustrations are new to me. I don't know anything about him, side from the information I picked up on this website. He was born in Manchester England in 1919 and died in 1987. His comic strip and comic book work reminds me of Basil Wolverton's drawings of super ugly monsters in absurd situations. I haven't had a chance to do an exhaustive search of his work online, but my favorite so far are his World Wide Weirdies illustrations, which have fantastically detailed drawings of bizarre creatures in the margins. Some early issues of Mad magazine, Humbug, and Weirdo also had these kinds of margin drawings. It's a great effect!

Here's a Flickr set with a bunch of World Wide Weirdies pages

Technorati Tags: Art & Design

• [Sergei Richard]

  I loved these when I was a kid, as well as his fantastic character Faceache. They were amazingly weird for children’s comics.

• [walter davis]

  i like the box with the dick-nose

• [nehpetsE]

  These are great! Itsworth noting that Aeron Alfrey (whose flicker stream this) is also an amazing artist of the absurdly grotesque.http://aeronalfrey.blogspot.com/ 

• [Rich Keller]

  I was wondering how I missed these over the years and it must be because he’s from Britain. I have to look up more of his drawings. Is ite me, or does it seem that he was influential on some of the Games Workshop critters, like the orks and gobbos?

• [Joey Anuff]

  That Flickr gallery is instant-revelation material. Tell me this is all well-orchestrated promotion for a just-published retrospective? 

• [geech]

  Great find Mark!!  So psyched to discover these! Totally Wolverton with Aragones flavorings in the margins. Excellence!!